Two Key Senators Join Assault On U.s. Military

October 6, 1985|The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and its senior Democrat have begun a concerted assault on the way the American military is run, calling the current system wasteful and dangerous.

In a series of speeches to prepare the way for a staff report this week, the committee chairman, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., and Sen. Sam Nunn, D- Ga., portrayed the military as a confusion of competing factions, quarreling over money in peacetime and tripping over one another in battle.

``If we have to fight tomorrow, these problems will cause Americans to die unnecessarily,`` Goldwater said. ``Even more, they may cause us to lose the fight.``

Senate aides said the speeches last week were the opening of a campaign that would eventually lead to legislation to streamline the military, impose greater unity on the services and change the role of Congress in military affairs.

For advocates of reorganizing the military system, the enlistment of Goldwater is an important advance. In recent years the House has supported the cause while the Republican-run Senate Armed Services Committee has been considered an obstacle.

The Reagan administration has staunchly resisted fundamental changes in how the military is organized. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger has said he is generally satisfied with the system and has repeatedly dismissed calls for change with the dictum, ``If it ain`t broke, don`t fix it.``

Goldwater, who hinted earlier that he might be sympathetic to changes in the system, clearly broke ranks with the administration last week. ``It is broke, and we need to fix it,`` he said. ``It is clear that the Department of Defense won`t make the necessary changes.

``As someone who has devoted his entire life to the military, I am saddened that the services are still unable to put national interest above parochial interest,`` said Goldwater, who has retired from the Air Force Reserve after 37 years with a two-star general`s rank.

The two senators` speeches last week included a stinging denunciation of the role of Congress. They pictured Congress as a dawdling, self-indulgent overseer, preoccupied by trivia, jealous of its parochial interests, obsessed with how much the military spends but indifferent, Goldwater said, to ``what for, why, and how well.``